Simple Answers
by SecondGuess
Summary: ...she knew he would answer honestly if she asked him outright. It was his way. Redemption- Vignette I


a/n: This story is a direct result of the unexplored chemistry between Jessica Steen and Clancy Brown, two actors who I felt weren't given enough chances to showcase the full potential of their rapport. Danziger and Julia had a way with each other, a sort of shorthand that imbued their peripheral relationship with familiarity. I decided to try my hand at what will hopefully become a series of Med Tent meetings between the two, mid-cannon, as we all know Danziger was Dr. Heller'smost frequent patient.

I'm not saying it's love, but there's something there. :)

As always, many thanks to my Beta Diva FCB Allison, who knows I like it rough. *wink*

Timeline: Day 52 on G889, immediately following the events of "Redemption."

* * *

Danziger spoke first.

"You think you could do somethin' for me?"

He eased himself down on the cot, favoring his right side tiredly. The last in a long line of patients who had barely survived Reilly's ZED, John was the only member of the group who had been able to observe its behavior. Both Yale and Alonzo had also been hit by the sniper's explosive ammunition, but only Danziger had interacted with the cyborg itself.

Back at camp, the group had been privy to a brief portion of their exchange when the mechanic had opened all channels, but Danziger's reckless refusal to bargain with the killing machine had seen to it that most of what his frightened friends overheard was nothing but his own agonized suffering.

Julia had a hundred questions.

There were so many things she was curious to know: had the ZED inadvertently given him information about Reilly or his whereabouts, something only she could recognize? Had it divulged any more answers about the penal population on G889? Had Danziger been able to observe the worm bullet's behavior; had he been aware of any clear internal tracking system?

With a sigh, Julia sat on her stool beside the bed. Her wrist was throbbing unbearably; an obvious fracture of the piciform- and possibly the lunate- that she'd temporarily set in order to tend to the others. Danziger had been shot and had just undergone invasive abdominal surgery without an anesthetic. Neither one of them was in prime condition right now.

And as it was, Julia's very presence in this camp was still dangling by a thread.

They were alone. Alonzo had actually gone off to bed when she'd asked him to, and Julia wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about that. It was no accident that Danziger was the last to be seen. His tone had made it clear that this was something he had been patiently waiting to ask her in private.

Of all these people, these fifteen strangers whom Julia had sacrificed everything for, she probably understood John Danziger the least.

As a patient, however, she already knew him by heart.

"Could you please look me in the eye and tell me that you're finished with all this Council bullshit, so I can tell my daughter it's okay for her to sleep?" With a wince he stretched himself upright, tugging on the recent damage to his oblique, demanding her gaze. "See, me…I don't care either way. You're here and your doin' your job, and if part of that job puts my family at risk than I think I can handle that, so long as the other part is keepin' them alive. This group needs to stay together no matter what, Heller. We need every pair of hands and set of lungs and we sure as hell need your extraordinary mind."

His somber expression made Julia's chest tighten remorsefully. His eyes were kind.

"I'd like to be able to tell True that Julia is a person she can trust," he continued, unblinking. "I have a habit of putting my life in your hands."

When they'd pulled Julia out of VR, thinking that she'd killed Devon with her bare hands, Bess' eyes had been full of anger and desperation. Yale's had been clouded with uncertainty and Devon's had welled with the sting of betrayal. Even then, John's expression was calm.

He'd soothed her, his hands unbearably gentle as he eased the headset from her face. He'd convinced right then and there that despite her treason, she was still part of his group.

She'd thought that had been the last time she would ever see John Danziger. Twice today, in fact. But here he was, sitting in her Med Tent, once again her patient.

She should have felt grateful for his amazing gift of understanding, and on some level she was, but what bubbled to the surface was the result of waking up to find she'd been left behind, only to return to find Eden Advance under attack. As terrified as she'd been at the prospect of surviving alone, the threat of malnutrition and exposure, she'd been even more concerned for the people who she'd come to care for, both literally and metaphorically. They'd been without a doctor for no more than twenty-four hours.

If it had been forty-eight, they would all be dead.

"That didn't seem to matter when you left me behind," Julia countered, not as surprised by the depth of her anger as she was by her inability to suppress it. John didn't deserve to bear the brunt of her frustration. If anything, he'd just shown her he was worthy of her respect.

The venom in her voice startled him and he lowered his eyes with chagrin, shrugging his deltoids tensely as he tugged off his jacket.

"The group voted. Majority rules," he reminded her stonily, obviously offended. "What could I have done, Heller? Like it or not, Devon Adair controls these people. They might not like it one bit- I sure as hell don't- but it's her mission we were flyin' and it's her gear and supplies that have gotten us this far."

The truth in his words terrified her.

Determined to regain control of her emotions by way of professional focus, Julia helped Danziger ease his shirt over his head without aggravating the cauterization of his lateral and circumflex arteries. John let his dose of reality settle in while Julia swiftly diverted her attention to the task at hand. She suspected she'd need to reopen his wound and clean up Devon's efforts at clotting a bit.

The rough, puckered hematomic edges of the incision worried her; served as yet more proof of how desperately the group needed her. They were clueless. They were reckless and naive and oblivious to the fact that she'd given up a career's worth of loyalty to The Council to protect them.

"You were plottin' against her. You experimented on her _son_, Julia," he reminded her with quiet force, shivering a bit in the cool evening air. "I cuts us up, how much we trusted you. My people, we don't find that kind of trust without a cost."

"I understand," she whispered, and she did. She stared at the ragged, crimson scar that spanned from his gluteus medius up to the initial layers of the rectus abdominis.

Julia felt as though the strange, unspecified pain she was experiencing in her own stomach was going to suffocate her. Nothing had ever hurt this much; never had she felt this kind of physical response to a purely mental stimulus. Not even under the effects of Uly's DNA had she ever felt this raw, this ashamed.

She hadn't thought it was possible.

"We still need you, Doc. Me more often than anyone else, I guess," he added wryly, trying to soften the sting, "but all of us need you. That's gonna have to be enough for now, Julia. You can't ask for their friendship, not yet."

Danziger hissed as she brushed her fingers over his ribs, accidentally bumping her damaged hand and causing her to flinch. Julia barely noticed it, fighting to control her breathing as she inspected the area around the sutures.

"Why are you telling me this, Danziger? What makes you different from any of the others?" She asked, flinching again as she reached for her Micro-Mend. "I'm a saboteur, you said it yourself. Are you seriously going to claim that you still want to by my friend?"

With a soft grunt, Danziger struggled to keep his temper.

"Well, I'm sure as hell not your enemy, or neither one of us would be here, now would we?" He inquired acerbically, gasping again as he caught her inquisitive, uninjured hand in his own. "Do you have a pain block?"

The request for medication was unlike him.

"It's too soon, Danziger," she admonished softly, her nerves so frayed that everything was coming out harsher than she intended, alarming her every time. "It can't be that bad, your last does was only--"

"For yourself," he clarified gently, his brow arching understandingly. Julia wondered if he had any clue that he was killing her with his kindness. "You need to take somethin,'" he insisted, securely restricting movement of her Diaglove until she accepted the Hypo-Gun he'd proffered from her work station.

"It's not that bad, I'd rather be sharp while I take care of this," she stalled, glancing down at his wound distractedly.

"Do it as a favor to me. You're hands are shakin' harder than Adair's, Doc, and I've had enough of that to last me a while." With a tired sigh he took back the Hypo-Gun, loading it with a pain block capsule before presenting it to her with an outstretched hand. Insistantly, he took her hand and folded it over the instrument when she refused to budge. "You don't have to be in pain."

His fingers lingered over hers, and Julia finally pulled away as though his skin was searing her own.

"I'm fine," she sniffled.

"You're hurt. And your exhausted," the pity in his voice was unraveling her again. She was scared that if she stopped to take a breath, lessened her own agony, she wouldn't be able to hold it together.

Danziger's words had cut her to the quick.

"Take the damn block so I can get back to True, okay?" He teased weakly, and with a flustered sigh Julia quickly held the device to her jugular, releasing the medication rushing into her bloodstream. She closed her eyes in relief and felt him pat her knee encouragingly.

"Please stop, Danziger," she brushed him off, easing him down flat on his back. The last couple of inches pained him, she could tell, and she tried to focus all her energy on the search for any unnoticed internal bleeding left in the worm bullet's wake. "Why aren't you upset? You should be just as angry at me as the rest of 'your people,' I deserve it."

Julia didn't like the vulnerability in her voice, and it scared her that she was perilously close to exposing herself to this man who had no right to show her such mercy.

"I just want you to know that someone understands," He mumbled with his eyes shut against her laser cut. "I think it's important. I think you've earned that much."

"Alonzo understands. After all, he's the one that came back to get me, isn't he?"

Again Danziger frowned stoically, obviously confused by the fact that she was repeatedly lashing out at him. She felt frazzled, just as freshly torn inside as the burly man splayed across her examination cot.

"What's that supposta mean?" He challenged, opening his eyes and attempting to sit up on his elbows. Julia pushed him down, less than gently. These feelings of anger and shame and confusion weren't her own.

Either that or this was the first time she was flying without a net.

With no warning, Julia began her search, carefully slicing away the makeshift closure with second-nature ease. Peering intently at the network of femoral veins and arteries in his left leg, Julia continued with her brave front.

The anger felt like something to hold on to.

"I'm sorry if I was unclear. It's just that, the last time I checked, Alonzo was one of your fellow crew members and _he_ didn't take Devon Adair's decree sitting down."

With lighting fast-reflexes, John shot up and grabbed the Diaglove, narrowly missing several buttons that could have made swift work of completely severing his limb.

"What the hell are you doing, Danziger!" She exclaimed, her pulse racing at he squeezed insistently, glaring at her with his last ounce of patience.

"That's enough of that," he growled with menacing softness, finally releasing his hold.

Julia quickly ascertained that he'd avoided any further injury with his reckless behavior, and with terrifying clarity she realized that she'd pushed too far.

She'd been sure that if she'd bruised his ego enough, he'd back down.

All the other times they'd butted heads, she'd gotten her way by putting up enough resistance. It had worked when Julia had insisted he use a sleep aid to help keep the memories at bay while recovering from his brush with the mysterious virus that had claimed the other survivors' lives, as well when she'd made him spend the night in the Med Tent after he'd returned from the disastrous scout for water dangerously dehydrated.

It _always_ worked with Alonzo.

She hadn't counted on Danziger to actually fight back.

The intensity of his reaction shouldn't have surprised her. In fact, it made perfect sense that he'd regard an attack on his pride with more vehemence than he ever would his physical safety.

John took his size and strength for granted. To him, they were merely tools he could use to protect what little he had in this life: the people he loved and his good name.

"You know nothin' about me," Danziger informed her bluntly, his calm façade wavering back into place. "If you think you've got me pegged cause I'm the same brand of hired help as your lover boy then you're way off, Doc. I would never treat a woman the way I've seen him behave. I would never mope around this beautiful planet ungrateful to be alive, and I certainly wouldn't tear this group apart because I was thinkin' with my dick."

That stung, even if the rational part of Julia's mind had resigned itself to certain facts about the appropriateness of her relationship with Alonzo. As far back as their first week planet side, she'd known there were limits to her attraction, but until she'd found herself abandoned she'd regarded the pilot's smothering affection as one of the greatest safeties afforded to her on this planet. He'd come back for her, and that told her a lot about his devotion, but he'd let them leave her first. Her scientific rationale was still trying to tally up the odds. The blunt blade of waking up alone was still buried deep in her heart, buried under all the horrific events of the day.

Danziger had no right to question her relationship with the pilot. Ever since they'd come back with water, Devon and Danziger seemed to be spending a lot more time together, for two people who didn't enjoy each other's company.

Then again, Julia had never been very adept at observing the laws of attraction. Bess was the one with the theory, but it seemed sound enough for Julia to test.

"You would have gone back for Devon," she whispered back, strangely certain it was true. She began making quick work of a new set of sutures, a smoother scar to remind Danziger of his folly until she could find the equipment to manufacture a batch of cytokines.

"I would have gone back for _True_," he corrected her icily, his pyramidalis noticeably tensing at the mention of Adair's name.

Was he lying?

"No one else. And you can bet your ass I never would have let anyone leave her behind to start with. If you're lookin' for a knight in shining armor then stick with Flyboy. I'm not gonna leave these people unprotected to follow my heart, I'm stronger than that."

He was definitely not lying.

Ironically, it was that moment that John's pain block began to wear off. Despite the fact that Danziger refused to let it show in his face, the Diaglove's readout alerted Julia to increased levels of superficial somatic pain.

"Strong or not," she backed down temporarily, fishing for the discarded Hypo-Gun, "I'm not quite finished here and you're due for another pain block."

With a small grunt, Danziger shook his head.

"Just finish it, forget the block," he argued. "True's upset, I don't wanna keep her waitin' long. I can't stand it when she cries."

Julia studied his expression intently, fascinated enough to pause in her work. Sensing her scrutiny, Danziger opened his eyes wearily, searching her face.

"Not gettin' any younger. Or more comfortable," he reminded her softly, confused by her silence.

"You're not being rational. It would only take me a moment to give you a block," she informed him bluntly, her brows drawning together as she studied his reaction. His eyes, normally so telling, gave her nothing.

"I can handle the pain," he feinted, twitchy with impatience and the worsening ache.

"You wouldn't take no for an answer, why should I?"

Julia knew she should either give him the block or get on with it, but Danziger was there before her like an open book on a window sill, breezing open in fits and starts, giving her glimpses off the person hidden in the pages.

The gust she received in reply was bitter, his gunmetal stare all but slammed the book shut. It didn't phase Julia that it might be better to hold her tongue, she just wanted to know. She wanted to hear the rationale from his own to lips, and she knew he would answer honestly if she asked him outright.

It was his way.

"Why do you do that, John?" She asked gently, the abrupt change in her demeanor catching him further off guard. "Why do you insist on suffering?" Danziger sighed, scrubbing his face.

"Look, Doc, stitch and talk, okay? It's late," he brushed off her question, obviously not as comfortable with someone prying into his psyche as he was with judging her own.

"Why do you get yourself shot?" She countered, deflecting the conversation back to the matter at hand, John's near-fatal encounter with the ZED and the endless fifty-nine minutes it had taken them to reach him and remove the bullet. "Why don't you ever remember to turn on your gear or tell someone where you're headed or stop to think before try to run down the side of a mountain?"

Julia asked her questions with genuine wonder. For someone so careful, his reckless streak seemed grossly out of place.

"It not intentional," he scoffed, hissing as she silently facilitated a temporary truce. As she resumed her procedure, she made it obvious she expected more of an answer.

"We all heard you with that ZED, Danziger. You were egging it on."

"I was tryin' to keep him talkin,'" he amended quickly, watching her work with morbid curiosity.

"No, you were being indignant. You weren't pleading with it, like anyone else would've done. You were questioning _it_, you were goading it on…you wanted the pain. Just like now."

"Oh for shank's sake, Hell--"

"It doesn't make you any less of a man to admit to weakness," she assured him carefully, silencing his denial. "And it certainly doesn't prove you're a man to torture yourself or to put yourself in harm's way."

Danziger was pouting, truly incensed. He struggled to keep his tough front intact.

It seemed Julia understood him better than she'd thought.

"You can pick on Alonzo all you want," she continued, "but if he hadn't succumbed to his depression, none of us would have known what he was truly feeling. I wouldn't have been able to help him--"

"So that's what you want, to fix me?" Danziger made it clear that he wasn't appreciative of the comparison she was drawing. "I may have some wear and tear but I'm not _broken_. My wings were clipped long before we crashed on this rock, Julia, I grew up in the quadrant. I know all about sufferin' and squeezin' by and raisin' a child around power tools, and I have never let a little discomfort stop me from puttin' food in her mouth or shoes on her feet or a rigging bolt through my shoulder to keep her from gettin' caught in the line of fire."

It was clear that Julia had struck a nerve, but she hadn't been far off in her psychological diagnosis. Danziger truly thought of himself as an afterthought, as an expendable means to an end.

"I'm not saying I don't repect your choices, Danziger. I am truly aware of how much we've gained from the risks you've taken here, but it--"

"I never caught a single break in my entire life until that little girl came along, and I count havin' her safe and healthy on this incredible planet as the second."

He spat his words, passionate to the core about the second chance at starting a life he'd been given. Julia had already known; he'd showed his commitment again and again, but it meant something to hear him say it.

Danziger's conviction reminded her of herself, not so long ago. She was glad that at least one of them had held on to what they believed in.

"I'm not gonna jeopardize True's freedom. I'm not gonna let her die of thirst and I'm not gonna let those vehicles break and I'm not gonna let any Diggers or any _other_ lifeform hurt Adair's kid. I'm not gonna break," he insisted as she finished the final stitch and cut the Derma-Synth wire neatly. Danziger grunted. "No pain no gain, Heller, didn't the Council teach you that when they tried to blow you up with the rest of us?"

The sympathetic timbre of his voice couldn't quite mask Danziger's brutal honesty, nor did Julia think that had been his intention.

She was too exhausted to argue, and feeling too fragile to exert the offensive tactic she'd clung to earlier. She could feel her barriers slipping, spurred on by his insistence that she explain herself. He'd bumped himself back to the end of her list of patients just for the opportunity to get his answers.

Julia suspected it meant more to him than not bleeding to death.

"Haven't you ever believed in something so hard that you can't…see the forest through the trees?" She asked timidly, unstrapping her Diaglove as Danziger insistantly eased himself upright.

"Of course I have," he admitted honestly, his piqued tone softening around the edges. "It's part of bein' human."

Pensively, he turned his shirt right side in, carefully slipping it on. Julia found herself incapable of touching him, though he was probably causing himself pain with so much movement.

She felt like she would shatter at the slightest impact, so tired of feeling cut off from the group, from Alonzo, from all the other millions of people who trusted their hearts just as much as their heads. Danziger made scary sense, in a primal, intuitive way that which Julia had just come to recognize as her instincts. Her true instincts, not the ones she'd been skewed to rely upon.

The instincts that had emboldened her to move forward with her experiments on Uly. The instincts that had allowed her to be distracted by Alonzo and embarrassed by Devon and sympathetic towards True.

This was how Danziger felt things, all the time. This downpour washed over his every waking minute.

"You're human, too, you know," Danziger murmured compassionately once he'd managed with the shirt. Julia felt as though the tent was alive with her every realization, but Danziger just scratched his rough chin, oblivious to her study.

He was comfortable in his skin in a way that all of Alonzo's symmetry and angles could never match.

"No matter what your parents did to your genes, and no matter what you thought was so important that you stole it from Uly. We can chose what we become, Heller. Hell, even True knows that. At the end of the day you're not accountable to anyone but yourself; it how you sleep at night or not. If you don't let yourself feel it once in a while, you forget what your made of. _That's_ why you deserve a second chance."

With a tentative caution that reminded Julia of Pegasus' birth, Danziger leaned his elbows on his knees, shrinking himself down to her height and forcing her gaze.

"Every once in a while it's okay for you to have a human reaction."

He placed a hand on her shoulder with exquisite care, and with the steadying contact Julia realized that she'd been trembling.

"I thought I was doing the right thing," she confessed, her voice thick with tears she was just barely keeping at bay. "I thought my work could accomplish something wonderful for so many people."

Julia stole a look at the mechanic, and he nodded wordlessly, his thumb worrying the fabric of her thermal shirt.

"I thought Devon was being so selfish, so short-sighted. Council control of this planet meant everything to me," she hiccupped once, her breath catching. "I thought she was such a fool, but it turns out it was me, all along. My whole life I've been a pawn. I was nothing but a mind to them." With abject repentance she searched Danziger's eyes for absolution. "And I was so happy."

Her voice cracked, and as the damn burst Danziger swept her forward into his arms, squeezing her gently as he rubbed calming circles over her back.

"You'll get through this, Julia," he consoled, his hushed tone straightforward and sure. "We're all gonna get through it together. I'll make sure, okay?"

Something tugged at Julia's gut, something unexpected, and she shied away from John's comfort with a furious shove.

"What do you want from me, Julia?" he asked, flabbergasted and annoyed. "What do you want me to say?"

Despite the quality of his reaction, Danziger's eyes echoed his question with profound tenderness.

Julia felt her final heartstring snap in two.

"I don't know," she ground out, her jaw set as tears coursed down her cheeks.

"What do you need from me?" he tried again, reaching out to still her tremulous hands, fitting his palms over her fists firmly.

Before she was aware of her actions, Julia was there in his arms again, pressing her lips to his with a desperate urgency that Danziger couldn't deny. His hands slid up her arms, mindful of her left wrist, and he returned her kiss with a tentative brush of his nose across the bridge of her own, fitting himself to her profile.

Rational thought threatened to invade but Julia batted it away, shoved at it until Danziger's responses intensified and she lost herself to the contact.

She knew it was wrong, but that didn't necessarily make it a mistake. Alonzo would be the first person to remind her of that. John's stubbled cheek and full lower lip grounded her. True to form, he didn't back down.

This was what she needed from him, and he gave it freely.

When the world had stopped spinning, Julia felt him pull away, but before she could open her eyes he tucked the crown of her head under his chin. His lips brushed against her hair.

"That can't happen again," Danziger said finally, after her breathing had calmed and he'd managed to find his voice. Julia smiled at the hint of embarrassment in his soft decree, though she knew he was right. "Nobody in this group needs anymore hurt. Lonz' is a good enough guy, I wouldn't do that to him," he affirmed as his hand smoothed her hair affectionately.

Julia wrapped her arms around his waist, hugging him as fiercely as his delicate condition would allow, hoping her body could tell him what her intellect hadn't yet found words for.

"Thank you," she whispered, lingering a second longer before easing herself away from the comfort of his arms.

Finally satisfied with her answers, Danziger stood shakily and Julia rose with him, spotting his movements as he tested his full weight on his injured leg. Meeting her eyes with amusement, he spoke through gritted teeth.

"Give me the damn pain block, Heller."

Julia grinned, feeling as though the oppressive weight of her recent ordeal was finally lifting. She quickly inserted a new capsule into the device and administered the proper dosage, feeling lighter still at the sweet sight of relief flooding Danziger's drawn features.

"Get some rest, Danziger," she instructed, meeting his eyes with newfound understanding. He nodded.

"You deserve someone better," he mused unexpectedly, as an afterthought.

Julia reached up to brush his cheek.

"Someone _better_ than Alonzo?" she teased back, eliciting a deep chuckle. At the sound she felt drawn to him again, the butterflies in her stomach stirring at his wistful smile. "Somebody more like you?"

At her challenge, Danziger broke from her gaze, studying his boots for a moment before choosing his response.

"Somebody better than either one of us," he clarified with a quirk of the cheek, stroking her hair once more before bending guardedly to retrieve his jacket.

"You deserve someone, too, you know," Julia offered warmly, as a friend. "Someone to lean on."

"I've got someone, and it's past her bedtime," Danziger confirmed contentedly, making his way to the exit.

"You know that's not what I meant, John," she whispered, catching his arm before he could escape.

"Yeah, but it's enough," he reassured her. "It's all there is for me."

Danziger squeezed her hand, looking down at her plainly, and Julia fought the urge to brush his unruly hair from his eyes. "Take care of that wrist," he murmured hoarsely, turning away to push his way out into the darkness.

After nearly a full minute's inspection of the vinyl entrance flapping in the breeze, Julia jadedly made her way back to her workstation. Somewhere out there, Alonzo was curled in guileless slumber, never for once even dreaming that there was more to love than pretty words and sexual chemistry.

Sitting down to gingerly remove the splint from her fracture, Julia found Danziger's words echoing in her head, and with them found the same bittersweet satisfaction.

"It's all there is for me," she whispered to herself, before settling down to work.


End file.
